“Sales of corn seeds and traits, Monsanto’s key products,
fell 5 percent to $598 million in the quarter. And sales at the
company’s agricultural productivity unit, which includes Roundup
herbicide, dropped 12 percent to $1.1 billion.”

Monsanto relies on its chemical herbicide sales for its shareholders,
but since the World Health Organization’s IARC, and the state of
California have announced that glyphosate, the main ingredient in
Roundup, is probably carcinogenic, bans are cropping up all over the world. Even without formal bans, Swiss and German retail outlets are ditching Roundup due to customer concerns about the chemicals and their health.The French minister has also asked retailers to stop selling Roundup.
Lowe’s and Home Depot as well as other retailers in Europe have stopped
selling Roundup, yet it is still sold in the US. Monsanto obviously
can’t rely on American sales alone of its formerly best-selling chemical
concoction to stay financially solvent.Even when Monsanto was claiming that it was reducing the use of
various herbicides to grow its GM seeds a few years back, Roundup sales
were skyrocketing – but that doesn’t seem to be the case now.
Monsanto enjoyed some of its highest stock prices in 2008,
but 2015 and 2016 aren’t looking as hot for Monsanto. Though I admit
that Monsanto is still making TONS of money even with sales drops, a 12
percent decrease in sales in less than a quarter is terrible news for
most companies. Monsanto will feel this pain as it becomes better known
that its products are hazardous to the environment, the pollinators, our
pets, and us. Maybe we can watch the biotech machine sputter out just
as quickly as it rose to fame.